Past Stories

Manga Studio 5

Burn

A little fire to start your week off just right. I know I need something to get me going right about now.

Long weekends wear me out. I started on last Wednesday traveling for over 12 hours round trip to pick up my oldest son’s new (used) car. I got a “Thanks, Dad” at least out of him. Then of course Thanksgiving stuff, then hanging lights on the house, installing hand rails for my wife, and everything else under the sun and I’m one worn out old fart.

You Members, I have the alternate version of last week’s comic done. Email me and you’ll get it. I’m looking at a way to separate the more… revealing content from everything else. I may have a solution in the near future that will make it much easier on all of you Members.

Deep Purple’s “Burn” was not a favorite of mine. I’m a HUGE Ian Gillan fan and when he wasn’t on this album, I was more than turned off. In fact, “Burn” was the last Deep Purple album I bought. Anyway, a little more burning to get your Monday started.

Never heard of “truckabilly” before. Rockabilly, yes, but not that one. And my uncle was a union truck driver all his life, so would have thought I’d heard of that one.

Smokey and the Bandit rocks… so hokey it’s great. “Hang on to yer ass, Fred…” Jerry Reed was originally cast as the Bandit, did you know that? He bowed out to friend Burt Reynolds and took the role of the truck driver. Can’t imagine the movie with Reed as the Bandit at all…
😛

Much of a fan I am of the Gillian Purple, I love “Burn.” It’s one of the first headlong balls-out high-speed adrenaline rockers, and to this day, I adore those songs. (Yeah, I know – the live version of “Highway Star” and the furious onrush of “Speed King” beat it to the punch, but I did say “one” of the first. 🙂 ) Glenn Hughes’ live version of this song is a powerhouse, even with a backing band inferior to Deep Purple. Hughes may be a dick, but this song still rocks my bones.

It’s funny – for all that hard rock has a harder slam now than it did back in the ’70s, I feel like there’s an intensity of purpose there that other, newer bands just try to make up for with thick production and sheer aggression. Much as I enjoy bands like Wolfmother, Undun, System of a Down or Metallica, I haven’t heard something with the gut-kick potency of “When the Levee Breaks,” “Ace of Spades,” Dissident Aggressor” or even “Draw the Line” in ages. Volume and speed don’t make up for songwriting chops, kids! Under all that fury, there still has to be substance.

Maybe I’m just an old dude, but when I listen to my 15-hour History of Metal playlist (ranging from Sabbath’s “Iron Man” to Gorjira’s “The Silver Chord, plus an additional “prehistory” mix that starts with Robert Johnson and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins), it’s still the ’70s stuff, with occasional flickers in the ’80s and ’90s, that sounds heaviest. A lot of the later stuff – Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, Napalm Death, Cradle of Filth, etc. – just feels like endless screaming, riffing and growling to me. Gimmie Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Motorhead and Deep Purple any day over those dudes!

That said, there’s a stretch of that playlist covering the late ’80s into mid-90s that’s like a Hell’s Angels gang beating. Starting with Wendy O. Williams’ “Hoy Hey – Live to Rock,” wrapping up with Kittie’s “Spit,” and spanning Pantera, King’s X, Guns n’Rose, L7, Nirvana, Metallica, Alice in Chains, Body Count, Limp Bizkit, Korn, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Type O Negative, Danzig and a bunch of other stuff, that portion of the mix takes no prisoners. Listening to the back-to-back volley of “Man in the Box,” “(Down With) the Sickness,” “Killing in the Name Of,” “Break Stuff,” “Cop Killer” and “Got the Life” is like taking a hammer to your skull… adding a jackhammer a few songs later with a span of Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Marilyn Manson, L7, Mayhem, Thrill Kill Kult, White Zombie, Tool, Rollins Band, Slipknot and Kittie. Man, the ’90s were an angry decade! Very little metal since then has even come close to that level of intensity.